"It didn't seem important at the time," Justin says. He leans across the kitchen counter, which hasn't had anything on it the entire duration of Chris's stay. "Did you want some coffee?"
"Yeah," Chris says absently. He's been staring at the clipped section of newspaper for a good ten minutes without seeing, without fully comprehending. It shouldn't take so much to put the pieces together: a police line, the trunk of a car, a headline.
"There's only instant left, I think," Justin says. He pulls a tin out of a cupboard behind him, but Chris isn't looking. Doesn't really care.
"Fine," Chris says. Political assassination, it's saying. Uncertain circumstances. And, "How the fuck could you not think it's important?"
Justin looks up from spooning stale coffee powder into a mug. "Sorry?"
"How could you not think it's important?" Chris repeats. "Your guys fucking killed him, and you couldn't be bothered to tell me?"
Justin shakes his head. "It didn't affect you," he says, simply.
Chris doesn't think he really believes that; he can't. Can't think that Chris wouldn't draw parallels, wouldn't wonder the same about himself. Wouldn't wonder if that's what they'd had planned the whole time, because they said they wouldn't, and they did. "How the fuck can you say that?" he asks, and stands up, tossing the clipping on the counter.
"Your situations are completely different," Justin says. He turns away, puts the kettle on to boil. Chris wants to make him mad, just once.
"They aren't," he insists. "You can't just kill a man and say it's not --"
"I didn't," Justin says, sharply, and turns back towards Chris. "It was the other cell."
"It doesn't matter," Chris replies. He rests his elbows on the counter, and stares blandly into the mug. "It still --"
"That," Justin interrupts, and Chris would really quite like to finish a sentence, "is the sort of reasoning that gets you people into this shit in the first place."
Chris lets a small indignant noise fall from his lips. "My reasoning has nothing to do with this," he says, too loudly, and thinks all he's accomplished is to get himself pissed off. "It just worries me," he continues, a little more quietly, still over-enunciating, "that one of you fuckers could probably kill me any time and I wouldn't have anything to do about it."
It's then that Justin laughs. "Of course you wouldn't have anything to do about it," he says, and Chris scowls. "But we're not going to do that. Our cells aren't, um. made up the same." Chris thinks his smile is a little too calculated.
"But," Chris says, and he has nothing to go on.
"Leave it," Justin says. "If I was going to kill you, I would have done it a long time ago."
Chris doesn't find this too comforting.
"Look," Justin says, and pours hot water into the mug, as Chris watches. "If it makes you feel any better." He doesn't finish the thought, just leans across the counter, and presses his mouth roughly against Chris's. Chris's first instinct is to jerk away, but he doesn't, and can't think why.
Justin licks at Chris's lips, once, and tilts his head away to say, "The other guy's coming later than usual."
"Okay," Chris says uncertainly.
Justin stirs the coffee, and watches the sludge drip off the end of the spoon as he pulls it out. Chris suddenly doesn't really want it anymore; doesn't know if it's because of its appearance, or something else. He tries not to think about it too hard.
"I will be down here," Justin says, and smiles again.
"I won't," Chris says, and leaves the coffee on the counter.